FEAR: Theseus Mandate
by Alardem
Summary: Lawrence Keller's first assignment happens to be the night where the F.E.A.R. Team actually gets to shine. Sort of like a polished turd. Parody of Perseus Mandate
1. Interval 0: The Needless Intro

**F.E.A.R: Theseus Mandate**

**Interval 0: The Needless Intro**

Once upon a time (to used such a clichéd expression), there was a girl named Alma. There was something wrong about Alma, something that everybody feared and hated. She had strange, dangerous powers, powers that proved fatally for some people. She could make people sick; make them go crazy, just by being with her. If she wanted, she could even make them kill themselves, if she desired it to be so.

For, you see, Alma was a freak, a mutation. She was a psychic. Unfortunately, a side-effect of her strange powers was that she was vulnerable to negative emotions. Very, very, very, very, **very** vulnerable. Particularly, her mind absorbed hate and sadness like a living sponge, and this hate festered in her. Her life was a constant plague of waking from one horrific nightmare, only to find herself deep inside something worse. It was an endless cycle of pain and suffering.

It got worse for her. Her own father, a scientist, decided that exploiting his own daughter for the gains of his company was worth it, and he subjected her to horrific experiments. The last time she saw sunlight was when she was eight years old, before her father locked her up in an underground vault. That was not all. Her father impregnated her with not one, but **two **children, children whom she became incredibly attached to. She never saw them. And then, once they were done using her, they locked her up and left her to die. And she did die.

But this is not her story. Yes, it is a story about the fallout of her vengeance, but no, it is not about her. It is a story about how a band of incompetent buffoons, despite all odds, managed to take on an amoral company, several angry psychics, a secret army of super-soldiers, and general stupidity. It is a story of how incredible luck, bizarre coincidences, and sheer weirdness can lead to the strangest things.

It is the story of the **F.E.A.R.** Team. More specifically, the Bravo Team.

Back in the Cold War (a conflict which historians constantly debate about its meaning to this very day), the government of the United States began taking money away from meaningless endeavors such as education, health care and social security, and into more helpful projects such as creating bigger bombs, and creating super soldiers. Literally billions upon billions of dollars were poured into ridiculous projects. It was an arms race of bizarre proportions.

Of course, by the time the Iron Curtain fell over, the United States was left with a quagmire of meaningless junk. In a move that is internally regarded as the country's most spectacular waste of talent, they attempted to form a secret Special Forces team, one assigned to take on "paranormal threats to National Security" (psychic terrorists.) Despite the rather exciting name they were given, the **First Encounter Assault Recon** team rarely took on any useful assignments.

Oh, yes, the **F.E.A.R. **team is worth enough of respect, alright. Occasionally, there would be strange events, terrifying missions that were quickly defused by the quick thinking of the Alpha team's competent members. However, our subjects are not the highly trained athletes of the Alpha Team, but rather, the incompetent, kooky branch of the team.

The Bravo Team was essentially a hall of shame. The head of the 'agency', a Robert "Rowdy" Betters (no one knows how on Earth he got that name, but using it in his presence may be detrimental to one's health), had created the group as the result of a bar bet he had made with a superstitious colonel, claiming that he could convince the president to fund a "ghostbuster" team. To his surprise (and horror) the president was absolutely enthusiastic about it, and assigned the overweight, lazy agent to be the coordinator.

Whereas the Alpha Team would get all the credit, competently eliminating paranormal threats, the Bravo Team's modus operandi would be to find a "haunted" place (or a hoax), blow it up, and then call it a day. Rarely, a religious member would even attempt an exorcism, and when no demonic monsters appear to bite one's head off, they declare the operation a success. They were an embarrassment to the **F.E.A.R. **team, and none of them ever expected that they would one day be needed. This story, however, will be different….

………………………….

"…_.yyyeesss…whatthehellisit?..."_

"_Stop dicking around, Morrison, it's Senator Matthews"_

"…_who?"_

"_Oh, Jesus Christ, how could you have possibly forgot? I've gone over this arrangement for the last six months. I call, you listen, you do __**exactly **__what I tell your men to do, understand?" _

"_Sorry sir."_

"_Don't 'sir' me! Now look, ATC's currently under attack by an army of clone-soldiers, led by a psychic commander named Paxton Fettel. Their project, Perseus, is failing, and it won't be long before Origin and Theseus are uncovered. I need you to-"_

"_Sir, I lost you at the word 'clone'."_

"_Ah, fuck it, 'terrorists.' You happy now? Anyway, that bitch in charge of the company, Aristide, she's decided to eliminate all the evidence-you listening?"_

"_Get off my back, old man, go on!"_

"_Oh, it'll be more than your back, Morrison. Anyways, I have a reputation to protect, and I know you do as well. I want you to take your men into their local database, retrieve all the incriminating data, and destroy it. I can't risk any chance of them finding out about my…involvement…"_

"_Sir, what about the civilians?"_

"_What civilians? There were never any civilians that night, they've all been evacuated."_

"_What are you talking about, sir? I thought that-"_

"_You thoughtless fool! Just go in there, kill everyone in your way, and retrieve the evidence! I don't care if a bunch of ghosts get in your way, just take the evidence now!"_

"…_..ghosts?"_

"……………"

"………_..I'll do it, sir………"_

…………………………………..

"Rowdy" Betters turned off the monitor in front of him, and lay back in his "command center" (or rather, car.) The whole place was a sloppy mess, covered with rather old and disturbingly sticky papers, half-emptied Cheezie Pooz bags, and other signs of a slob at work. It had already been a couple of hours since he had sent the new Point Man, Jankowski and Jin into the headquarters of a major Aerospace Company in order to "rescue" the hostages, and already, things were going to hell.

In addition to the crazy psychic clone soldiers (Jankowski couldn't stop sniggering during the mission briefing) that littered the building, it appeared that ATC itself was ordering its goons to repel any outsiders. Presumably, in an attempt to cover up their tracks. Essentially, that meant that F.E.A.R. was now at war with both Paxton Fettel and ATC. Oooh boyyy….

A loud tapping on the door spooked the shit out of the old man, and he instinctively aimed at the window, threatening to shoot down the intruder. However, the only thing making his valiant attempt fail was that he had no gun. The young man outside looked rather shocked, and vaguely disappointed. Betters sighed, shook his head, and opened the door.

The man was wearing an old grey sweater and a pair of typical jeans, looking as if he barely had any money to support himself. His brown eyes were worn and rather sleepy, and his dark brown hair was messed up. The stranger was stuttering, trying to explain himself.

"I'm so sorry for being an hour late, sir, I overslept and I missed the location, I'm sorry!"

Betters said nothing, and he simply stared straight ahead. He had been waiting in front of Neely's Bar (one of his 'rendezvous' spots) for an hour, waiting for the tardy new recruit to arrive. And this was it? He decided to test it out.

"What's your name, rookie?"

"Uhhh, Lawrence, sir, Private Lawrence Keller."

"Wrong answer! Try again…"

"The hell, man? What does it matter to you?"

"Good, good….why are you here, Lawrence?"

"Because the government needs a team to-"

"You're wrong, it's not that…"

"We're here to eat, sleep and fu-"

"Goddamnit, why are **you **here?"

"…uhhh….I….uhhh…..blew up a toilet…"

"….go on…."

"You see…this toilet…my buddies in boot camp, they swore that the toilet was talking to them, right? And I was like, no fuckin' way, right? And so I go to the toilet to laugh at their stupidity, and then I saw a face in the toilet!"

"I've heard of shitting bricks…"

"What? So anyways, the face in the toilet (I swear to Almighty Bob, it was a face), it then rose out of the water and came straight at me. I mean, you have a shit monster coming at you, what would you do, right?"

"I'd just get the hell outta there…."

"Well, you're a coward then. So anyways, I could vaguely hear one of my friends throwing something to me, and I caught it, and it was so fucking cool, you know? Just like in the movies. I dramatically pulled the pin off the pineapple he gave me (grenade, damnit, grenade), and then I threw it into the bowl. I forgot a dramatic one liner, but the explosion made up for it…"

"What happened next?"

"The commander came up to me, started to wind himself up for a screaming session, and then stopped randomly. He said that I would be an excellent candidate for the F.E.A.R. team, and he recommended that I transfer over to you. So, he basically kicked me out and he told me to hang by Neely's."

"You could have done something else, you know. Other than just literally blowing shit up.."

"Dude, you had to be there. It's a spur of the moment sort of thing, you know, like reflexes or something."

Betters grinned nastily, leaned over to stare Keller unpleasantly in the eyes, and said

"Well, in that case…welcome to Bravo Team, Pvt. Keller, your commander made a good choice in picking you. And how convenient of you to drop by in the middle of a mission…."

Keller gulped. He knew that **F.E.A.R.** would be a bad choice, but it seemed even stranger than he thought…


	2. Interval 01: The Advent of Annoyance

**Interval 01: The Advent of Annoyance**

The drive to the 'rendezous' point was a short, and awkwardly silent one, and Keller already regretted being in F.E.A.R. He had heard rumors of just how strange and inconsistent the agency was (an operation to rescue a kitten trapped in a tree had infamously resulted in the severe injuries of two F.E.A.R. agents and five rescue workers), but the dumpy old man seemed like a precursor for things to come.

They pulled up suddenly beside a dilapidated freeway, and Keller was shocked at just how empty the whole place was. The lights were still on, but there seemed to be no sign of life. Either the citizens had been evacuated, or it was not a very popular place.

"Get out."

He jerked his head back at the ridiculous old man, and then, with a helpless shrug, opened the door and stepped out. Was this his first mission?

"I'm gonna introduce you to your 'squadmates', Keller." The old man said, doing a rather obnoxious hand gesture when he spitefully mentioned Keller's team. The young man looked around, finding nothing but an old, green dumpster hanging suspiciously in the middle of the freeway. Keller looked at it oddly for a moment, and then suddenly charged towards it.

Suddenly, the top of the can flew open, and the wild, gunk-covered face of the man inside shocked Keller. The man had a dirty condom on his forehead, a banana on his shoulder, and he was pointing a broken bottle at the recruit.

"Put your hands in the air now!"

Keller sighed in disappointment. A drunken hobo? Was that his 'initiation'?

"I think you've had a little too much to-"

"Raynes, here's your new recruit" shouted Betters loudly and quickly, his contempt more than a little apparent in his voice. Keller stopped again, his mouth wide open. This…thing…was his squadmate?

"This is 'Captain' Daniel Todd Porilander Constantino Salieri Brolinio Andrew Wilson Raynes. We call him Raynes for short"

The "Captain" lifted a disgusting hand, and offered a shake.

"Welcome to F.E.A.R., brother, hope you'll survive it"

Lawrence said nothing. He was still in shock. "Rowdy" grabbed the young man by the neck, and whispered in his ear.

"Look, Keller, I'm sorry about this, I really am. You're a great guy, but I really need an extra team for this operation. Oh, and just so you know, he's not a captain. He's just some deluded guy who banged his head a little too hard and told us that he was seeing…martians, wasn't it? Anyways, I didn't WANT him on the team, but I needed SOMEONE on it. So…just humor him, alright? Good man."

He swung the speechless young man back, and then oddly enough, whistled loudly. He then walked up to the dirty old hobo (who had now crawled out of the dumpster), and then whispered something into the man's ear.

The cool night air washed over his face, and Keller felt almost…relaxed. He walked forward, towards the forbidden territory of the garbage can, and then leapt back as another figure came from behind the can, zipping his pants up. He had either been answering the call of nature, or perhaps, something else. Quickly, he straightened up, and then rapidly introduced himself.

"Hello, my name's Lawrence Keller, I'm the new operative for Bravo Team, and I have no idea what the fuck is going on."

The man, a thin, obnoxious-looking Asian man, grinned at him, and then walked forward.

"Ah, fresh meat! Welcome to the lowest paying job you've ever had, Keller, my name's Steve Chen and I basically run everything here. Electronics, First-Aid, Lock-picking, Combat….everything they forgot to put in the budget."

Keller smiled weakly, and then shook his hand. Suddenly, he heard the screeching of tires, and to his shock, realized that the F.E.A.R. Coordinator's car was already way ahead of them, a light in the distance. He had ditched them. Keller gave the finger to the car, and then buried his face in his hands.

"What a bastard! Now what?"

Chen slapped him on the back a little too enthusiastically, and then said

"First, prove yourself to the 'Captain.'"

He shoved the recruit over, and then to his horror, realized that the Captain had moved very close to him. He instinctively recoiled, and nearly shrieked in surprise. The man had his hand out, a filthy old thing. Keller looked at it as if it were a rotten fish.

"Shake."

Keller gave himself a mental slap. He was a soldier, part of a group dedicated to fighting paranormal threats. A little dirt, even from a psychopath, wouldn't hurt him. He gulped, and then stuck a reluctant finger at the proffered limb, closing his eyes. He ignored the fact that the man's vice-like grip was crushing his hand, because he knew that he had to be brave.

Finally, it was over. It seemed as if a curtain had been lifted over the proceedings. The "Captain" suddenly straightened up, shook the dirt off like a rabid dog (Keller had wisely backed away a few meters) and then glared at a mysterious point a few inches left away from Keller's face. The recruit assumed that he was attempting a thousand-yard stare, but the idiot was doing it wrong.

"Listen up, men! Our commander has been kind enough to leave us with several armaments"

He reached into the dumpster, and threw out several black things at Keller. After a rather awkward dodge, Keller picked up one to find a rather dusty old sub-machine gun. He smiled. At least he might have a chance to see some combat tonight.

"Armacham Technology Corporation has officially declared war on F.E.A.R., and they are now scrambling to destroy information. Our destination, a minor database, is only a few blocks past this freeway, and it's relatively empty."

Dozens of emotions swirled and battled through Keller's mind, and confusion won through. ATC? That absolutely massive corporation that practically owned everything in the city? It didn't surprise him that they'd be a bunch of scumbags, but openly attacking the military? He grinned, suddenly. He'd actually be uncovering a goddamned conspiracy tonight, and the F.E.A.R. team was beginning to look…not so bad.

................

Morrison wiped his forehead anxiously, desperate not to piss himself in front of the mercenaries. He hadn't heard much of the bastards, but it was pretty clear that they made the Nazis positively hospitable. They had entered the data center an hour ago, easily wiping out any civilians in the area (there were only a few overweight bastards who were jacking off in the locker room, easily dispatched.)

As for the data….there was a puny little laptop lying around, a password the only bar between them and the success of the mission. It require the encryption codes of an ATC employee….except Morrison had wiped out all the employees of the area. He was now terrified, trying desperately not to show it.

He wondered though, how lowly ATC would be to actually trap all their data, hundreds of hundreds of Gigabytes of sensitive data, into an old computer that should have been decommissioned decades ago? Odd, really.

The man beside him, a helmeted mercenary, flicked him on the shoulder and sent him sprawling onto the floor. The mercenary laughed softly, his voice disguised to resemble Darth Vader. It was certainly overkill, he could barely understand what they were saying.

"Wons zee teem gets hear, vee chow youse zem as ze key too dees."

"I'm sorry, what?"

The mercenary growled, pressed a button in his suit, and suddenly became a lot clearer.

"We got news of the F.E.A.R. team heading our way. They're the best of the best, and they've supposedly got knowledge on ATC's encryption codes. We'll FORCE them to help us…"

"Oh, okay. You can do that."

The mercenary walked on, giving the former NSA agent a kick in the head. Morrison's world was plunged into darkness.

…………..

Theta-12, otherwise known as "Ares" was fucked. That was certain. Paxton Fettel had been in a panic, literally throwing every available clone into the path of the F.E.A.R. Point Man, desperate to delay the killer enough for the commander to reach the Vault. Theta's team had been assigned to literally run over the Point Man.

"_I see you, fucker, you're not gonna get away!"_

_The Point Man stood calmly in the headlights, less than twenty feet away from Theta Squad's Armored Personnel Carrier. His mask and goggles concealed what he was truly feeling, but Theta-6 was pretty sure that he was dead meat. Suddenly, right before he heard the satisfying noise of flesh being ground into human hamburger, the Point Man disappeared._

"_What the-"_

_They smashed through a wooden wall, and suddenly fell into a convenient abyss. The Point Man slunk around from the corner, and ran forward, not even sparing a second glance at the fiery ruins of the fallen truck a hundred feet beneath him._

He was the only survivor of that failed assassination attempt. He had no weapons, he was bleeding out, and he was far from rescue. His radio was out; only playing re-runs of "London Bridge", and for the first time, the calming, soothing voice of Paxton was gone. He was alone. He shivered, not altogether instinctively. What was he going to do?

………

Keller was the first one to spot the soldier, a few hundred feet away from them, and immediately took cover behind a fallen truck. Chen had suggested that they use the old aqueducts beneath the freeway as a shortcut to the Data Center, and Keller couldn't really argue. Of course, looking back on the dump, it was certainly bad on the eyes. It looked like a whole pile of garbage. It seemed that wide-open spaces weren't everything.

They were now smack in the middle of a field of gray, with fallen pieces of rubble surrounding them. The fiery ruins of a truck illuminated the ruins enough to show the staggering figure of a soldier walking around. No, not any soldier, Keller told himself. It was a goddamned _Clone _Soldier. ATC had made a project to develop an army of clones, and now they were loose. Already, the absurdity level was pretty damn high.

And then, the Replica spotted them.

"Sergeant, take him out before he calls his friends!"

Keller hadn't given them his rank, and Chen had given him the nickname "Sarge." To be honest, he didn't mind it.

He nodded, and gave a mock salute to Raynes

"Aye, aye, Captain."

He then sprinted towards the escaping soldier, firing his sub-machine gun a little too enthusiastically. His heart was pumping, and he felt as if he was in a big game. The fact that the gun sounded rather…fake helped a big deal as well.

The Replica disappeared into a drainage pipe, only a hundred feet away from Keller, and he ran on. There was light in it, and he was glad to see another color that wasn't gray. He dived in, aiming his gun around, and then realized that there was a rusted old bridge a couple dozen feet ahead of him, and the Replica was standing weakly on the other side, daring him to come on. Keller wasn't one to avoid an invitation, and ran on.

As soon as he took a step on the bridge, he realized just how obvious the trap had been. The whole thing gave way, and he was suddenly falling, falling way down, way, way, _waaayyyy_ down.

_He fell into an ocean of muck, of shitty green crap. He was breathing it in, and the smell was unbearable. He lifted his head out, desperate to shake out the sludge, and took in a breath of stinky air. It honestly smelled like the world's worst case of body odour._

"_Oh Laaawwwrreeenncceeee, I've come baaaaack for yoooouuuuu!"_

_  
A great brown face came up to him, all burnt up and ruined. It was the shit monster, back to wreak its vengeance on him. Keller gulped. The monster was in its element now._

_Suddenly, it disappeared. He was dry, suddenly. He looked around, noticing that he had apparently been transported onto the set of a sci-fi film. It was a dark, creepy place. Perhaps it belonged to the UAC? Or maybe Weyland-Yutani? Or was it the Von Braun? It didn't matter, it was just a generic, haunted house that looked like it was in space._

_"Where the fuck have you been?"_

_It was Chen, who was looking rather worse for the wear. Namely, his clothes were covered with blood._

_Suddenly, his eyes dropped out, and he started coughing. First, blood, then teeth, and then, suddenly, a whole load of organs. Keller began to feel…not scared. It appeared that he had coughed up at least a few dozen hearts, a couple of spleens, six lungs, nine eyeballs, fifty-five legs, and a whole load of bizarre organs. It was a little too bloody to be frightening._

_And then it was over._

……..

A few minutes later, a manhole opened up, and the stinking, slimy figure of a F.E.A.R. agent climbed out. He was thankful that he hadn't met any opposition yet, but the hallucination was rather _odd_. He hoped it wouldn't interfere too much. He looked around, noticing that he had managed to conveniently find himself beside the ATC Data Center (a sign next to a rather old looking building told him that) The city itself looked pretty abandoned. He wasn't sure, but there was absolutely no sign of life, and it looked as if everyone had simply vanished. Even odder.

He saw a shadowy figure walking into a nearby alleyway, and suddenly desperate to meet up with someone, he ran in. Surprisingly, there was no sign of anyone. It was just a pile of garbage cans.

"Is someone there?"

A soft voice behind Keller asked, but before the young man could respond, something else happened.

"Nothing here except us garbage cans."

Keller backed away slowly, unaware that he walked right through the eyeless apparition of Spen Jankowski. The spectral F.E.A.R. operative buried his face in his hands, and dissolved into a small pile of ashes, making Keller cough.

He walked around the side of the building, noting that the other F.E.A.R. agents had already found the backdoor, and were now intricately examining it.

"What's the problem, 'gentlemen'?"

Chen grinned

"Well, I'm pretty damned sure that ATC'd bother to lock their doors. I'm trying to remember my five-minute course in lockpicking"

Raynes chuckled.

"Yeah, he read it off a magazine in the laundry."

"Cosmogirl's informative, didn't you know?"

Keller groaned, walked over to the door, and pulled it open.

"Here you go, master of unlocking."

Chen looked strangely at Keller for a moment, and then shook his head. The two F.E.A.R. operatives walked inside, and after a while, the "Sergeant" followed.

**(There. A little rushed, but I think it's good. ChildofAlma, I hope you'll like the shout-out I gave for one of your characters. Any other comments are welcome!)**


	3. Interval 02: Antagonizing The Crew

**Interval 02: Amoral Technology Corporation**

Gavin Morrison was in a panic. The F.E.A.R. agents would no doubt have entered the building by now, and he was terrified of what they might do to him. The Nightcrawlers had picked up radio chatter from the ghastly Replicas, reporting of a single F.E.A.R. operative who was nonetheless wiping them all out. Yet, there were THREE of them heading in his direction. Shit.

He still needed the encryption codes, of course. He swore angrily, and frowned at the Nightcrawler Commander, who was calmly staring at him with an infuriating smirk.

"Any ideas how we're gonna interrogate them?"

"We'll scare them."

"Eh, how?"

"By putting on a show."

Morrison spluttered in shock, as the mercenary opened up a closet, causing a rather fragile cardboard cut-out to fall out. Morrison picked it up, and realized that a crudely scribbled face had been hastily scrawled onto the board. It really wasn't that convincing.

"The security cameras are almost out of order. If they catch footage of this…."hostage"….they'll be scared."

"….are you a dumbass?"

"Say that again, Morrison."

Morrison sighed, and then said.

"Fine, we'll set up the scene in the basement. I'm the only one here who can actually act."

The couple dozen mercenaries huddled in the storage room scrambled into different places, searching out for the F.E.A.R. agents. It was a pity, really, a waste of talent. Bravo Team would be no challenge for the mercenaries.

……………..

The back entrance of the Data Center was mercifully empty and untouched, although it still made Keller feel nervous. The power was off, but it still looked as if there had been people moving around the place less than an hour ago.

Chen, however, appeared to be enjoying the damned affair, whistling out of tune and generally chuckling to himself. Presumably, he enjoyed wandering in dark, empty places. He was also behaving oddly, or to be more precise, odder than he would typically be. He was punching every closed door the operatives encountered in their path, spraining his hands and wincing in pain.

"What the hell are you doing? You think punching a door's gonna intimidate it into opening or something? This aint a video game!" Keller groaned, burying his face in his hands.

"Do you have an authorization, Killer? Get it, Keller, Killer? Awesome pun, aint it?" Chen chuckled infuriatingly.

"What? No, I mean, you remember any previous assignments? I know I'm new, but Bravo Team doesn't seem like they get much…action." said The unofficial Sergeant of the team with a disdainful air.

"Captain" Raynes spoke up this time, squinting at the rookie perplexingly.

"I've been here since 2002, 'Sergeant'. I've seen things that'd make your knees tremble, your jaw drop, your bowels voided and spleen filled up. Yes, F.E.A.R.'s done some pretty nasty shit."

Chen chuckled, and said.

"I joined F.E.A.R. a couple of years ago, thought it'd be pretty damn cool to fight ghosts and shit. You know, just like in the movies? Yeah, I was expecting Casper shit…not blowing crap up."

"Son, detonating our targets has been proven to be the only effective way to stop-"

"Shut it, old man!"

"I'm 46!"

"And you live with your Grandma."

Keller backed away nervously from the group, realizing that he'd be better off without the idiots impeding his progress. It sure was creepy though, walking through the empty darkness of the old data center. He felt as if a white sheeted ghost would fly in and confuse the hell out of him. A cold, unnatural breeze drifted through the corridors, and Keller noticed that there weren't any windows that he could see. He gritted his teeth, and moved on

Christopher Anderson grinned, and barely bothered to stifle his guffaws. The pathetic commandos from (PANICS? FEAR? UNCLE?) would arrive soon, unaware of his clever little trap. Breaking into the Data Center was easy enough; the Nightcrawlers had herded all the nerdy little personnel into the Garbage Disposal, and then easily executed them. It wasn't a challenge, but it gave him a boner, and that's what he needed.

They had disabled the power to the facility, activating the security gates. As such, the operatives would be forced to be herded into the crappy old lobby, and they could be captured from there. Chris growled. That pencil-neck NSA agent had ordered him to keep the soldiers alive, presumably because he was too much of a pansy-ass to see a little blood. Well, Chris didn't care about that.

He heard the footsteps of a lone man coming closer, twenty feet beneath him, and he prepared for the jump. The lobby was cramped, essentially a couple of crappy old sofas and a desk, but there was a chandelier placed above the proceedings, presumably to give a little "atmosphere" to the area. As the tall, lanky figure of the soldier came into view, Chris leaped down, aiming behind the soldier. His plan was perfect, except for one minor problem.

He did it upside down.

Keller heard the noise of something heavy crumpling behind him, and to his horror, he realized that the body of a man had fallen from above. He gulped, shocked at the sight of death, and closed his eyes. He was going to see a lot more death before the mission was over, freaking out would not help. With remarkable strength, clarity (and insanity), Keller sighed, and observed the corpse closer.

Although he had only seen a single Replica, the "Sergeant" was inexplicably insightful enough to surmise that the dead man was not a clone. He was clad in a black, unpleasantly skin-tight costume, and his exposed face revealed a brown-haired man with orange goggles on his eyes. He looked like an amateur ninja, or at least, a sci-fi bad-guy. To complete the ridiculous image, the corpse was holding a rather nifty-looking weapon in his cold grip.

Ignoring how cold and apathetic he was being to a DEAD BODY; Keller eagerly ripped the gun out of his hand, and studied it intently. He had always dreamed of holding a Laser gun in his hand, and the gun certainly looked like it had come straight out of Star Wars. It was black, with a rather useless red scope placed on top (the designer must have been an easily impressed teenager.) It had several different buttons on it, and the barrel was a pure, hypnotizing brilliant blue. He licked his lips, picked up the weapon, and to his delight, realized that it was as light as a feather.

He grinned, and walked on, keeping in the shadows. He had walked into a lobby, yet it was also eerily empty, the emergency lights flashing irritatingly at him. He moved on, finding a "Staff Only" door at the other end of the room. He kicked it open, flicking on his head-lamp (Any team that allowed flashlights to be attached to one's head was awesome in Keller's opinion) and negotiated through the darkness, wondering how cool he must have looked if he had been in a movie.

A fuse box was his reward for navigating through the maze of darkness, and activating it revealed just how depressingly dull the Data Center actually was. The basement was devoid of supplies and it was painted a dull gray color. Then Keller slapped himself. Who the hell would want to make a BASEMENT exciting anyway?

As he walked out of the lobby, he realized that his valiant actions had resulted in power being restored to the facility. He half-expected a hellish demon to teleport behind him and hollow out his skull for a satanic soup-bowl, but disappointingly, nothing of the sort happened. However, it appeared that several gates had been opened up, and Keller headed to the closest one.

After a long, dull experience of trudging through sparse, soulless hallways, the "Sergeant" found he in a room that looked half-way decent. It was frighteningly white, as if it was regularly maintained by a 24-hour squad of clean fetishests. To make things worse, it was a wide open area, wide enough to encompass Keller's old apartment and still leave enough room for an outhouse or too. Keller recoiled at the rather random comparison. A green sliding door beckoned, and Keller walked inside.

"HOLY FUCK!" screamed a voice and instantaneously, six weapons were aimed at the F.E.A.R. Operative's head. Keller sighed, and looked around at his 'attackers.' Chen and Raynes were to his side, but to his surprise, the remaining four were dressed in more recognizable battle fatigues, with the words Delta Force written on their shoulders.

"Command sent you as our reinforcements?" yelled the loudmouthed soldier incredulously, and Keller sighed as the Deltas laughed harshly. Keller was hoping to make a good impression in front of the military's "best of the best", and the F.E.A.R. team's reputation was already ruining that.

A dark haired Delta, who Keller could tell was important due to him bothering to not wear a helmet, cocked his head seriously to Keller, sizing him up silently. After a while, he nodded and grinned.

"Look, newbie, our squad was diverted from an assignment in the Auburn District to head into a nearby Data Center and empty out its contents. While we were in there, we were attacked by a group of stealthy mercenaries, and we got herded into this control center. If it weren't for this turret here" he gestured to a small console to the left side of the room, showing a live feed of the ceiling of the outdoor lobby. "We'd be dead."

"Hang on, we've got cable on this thing." Said Chen, chuckling obnoxiously to himself.  
The turret's heads up display suddenly shimmered, and an absurd scene came into view. A skinny, pencil-necked older man in a suit that clearly cost more than Keller's family, was awkwardly shambling around a crudely drawn mannequin, which in turn was awkwardly placed on a chair. The skinny little rich prick seemed to be aware of the security camera, shooting badly concealed glances at the lens, and he carried a knife in his hand.

"Give me the encryption codes, Mr. Bristol, and this would stop." Snarled the suited man, in a way that suggested he was addressing the mannequin.

"I…can't do that. I just can't!" said a squeaky falsetto voice, and with a pang of shock, Keller realized that the skinny man was doing a terrible ventriloquist act. His face was turned away, and he was shaking the mannequin's flat arms around, trying to make it look alive.

"You mean you won't, do ya? You ran Perseus, Icarus, Theseus, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus, Chronos and Hercules for Alma….I mean Harlan Wade, and you're going to tell us exactly what the hell you know about this." Keller's mind boggled at the list of Greek names, and he glanced around to find that the rest of the audience was spellbound.

"Synchronicity was an event. There's nothing to steal." Said the terrible falsetto voice, and Keller tuned out. The whole conversation made no sense, and to pile on the list of insanity, a dark hand reached out from behind the mannequin's throat, and then did a quick slicing motion across its throat. And then, Keller noticed that a ketchup bottle was barely visible, squirting out fake "blood" down the mannequin's body.

"We'll encrypt the data ourselves" said the mystery figure, and as he walked into the spotlight, the Deltas collectively groaned. It was a man in his sixties, with a beer gut, a paunchy face, orange goggles, badly dyed orange hair, and a black suit that was WAY too form-fitting. Presumably, he was the leader of the whole operation.

"Ah, we're being watched." Growled the skinny man, and he looked straight into the camera. The "leader" grinned, and strolled calmly down the hallway.

"Ah yes, Lawrence Keller, Steve Chen, and David Raynes, 'Rowdy's three stooges. How's that feel, Chen? You making a lot of money off this lavish operation? How about you, David? Found any martians? And as for you, Keller…..you know what, I don't know shit about you, and I don't give a fuck. I'm going to kill you guys."

The monitor switched off, and the room was silent for a moment. Keller broke the silence.

"How did he know we were here by looking at a camera? Is he psychic?"

There was a scramble for activity, and the only real thing to notice was that Keller was being shoved back out into the lobby by the rest of the team.

"It's been real nice knowing you, Keller, I hope we see each other next lifetime!" said Chen as he punched the recruit in the gut and then ran back into the monitor room. Keller groaned. A group of idiotic mercenaries were heading his way, and he was completely unarmed.

Except for that turret in the ceiling….

He grinned.

……

The elite F.E.A.R. Operative burst through the doorway of the monitor room, effortlessly cutting a swathe of gory destruction through the wave of faceless mercenaries. They cried in fear as their indestructible foe charged onto a pair of mercenaries, snapping one's neck with a sickening crack, and picking up the mercenary's weapon and turning it onto his opponents. He literally hosed them down with waves of blue fire, drowning out the screams of pain as he killed them all.....

At least, that was what Keller had been hoping to do. Instead, he was locked inside a computer room with a group of cold-blooded mercenaries bearing down on his position, and busy arguing with a computer for the "privilege" to use his sole defense against the deadly onslaught.

His trouble began when he tried accessing the console that allowed direct access to the ceiling turret out in the lobby was locked out.

**ERROR. PLEASE LOG IN.**

He stared in frustration at the screen, swearing to himself, and began furiously fiddling with the console.

What the fuck?

**USERNAME ACCEPTED: What the fuck?**

PLEASE TYPE IN YOUR PASSWORD, What the fuck?

Keller looked out at the door again, and coldly sucked in a breath. He could almost hear the sniggers of the men as they bore down on his position, and he had no idea what to do.

What's the password?

**NOT TELLING YOU! :-)**

Please?

**WHAT'S THE SQUARE ROOT OF FIVE DIVIDED BY NINE?**

aundioaoisdhqwioehjqwionmdklmnklnko

**ERROR. PLEASE WAIT WHILE PASSWORD IS PROCESSED....LOADING....**

"Heh heh, what a noob."

Keller heard distorted voices communicating just outside the doorway, and in shock, he realized that the mercenaries had already entered the lobby.

Hurry!

**SHUT UP, PLEASE. DID YOU KNOW THAT PATIENCE CAN SAVE LIVES?**

Not including yours, you fucking machine. Speed up!

**CRITICAL ERROR, SHUTTING DOWN.........NAH, JUST KIDDING, GO AHEAD AND USE IT! ^_^**

Keller mentally gave the finger to the machine, and then at long last, attempted to use the computer console. The upside of the long wait, was that the console had been equipped with a control mechanism suspiciously like a gamepad. Keller, being an avid fan of shooting games, had no problem with the tutorials.

The ceiling turret whirred to life, and the screen turned on to reveal three bars of "health." The movement of the turret was sluggish, but he didn't care. Standard fare for FPS. What was also standard fare proved to be utterly devastating to the first mercenary who was mercilessly cut down by the private's turret.

"Oh my God, he's using hacks!"

"What a faggot!"

"His mom sucks, lulz!"

There were five mercenaries altogether, one of whom had already been reduced to red giblets by the turret. At the sight of their friend having been turned into bite-sized chunks, they dove for cover. One took cover behind a conveniently placed column, two others behind an office cubicle, and one covered his head in his arms and started zigzagging around.

"Grenade, lawl!"

A blue cylindrical object appeared from beneath the cubicle, and Keller was shocked to find that it let out a shocking wave of electrical energy. As would be expected, it shorted out the turret, and left the monitor blank. Keller looked bleakly at the blackness of the screen, and then with a sigh, decided to charge out guns-blazing.

It worked.

As soon as he burst out the monitor room, bruising his left shoulder minorly and hurting his vocal cords by screaming a lot, the effect was amusing on the mercenaries. They let their guard down.

Bad move. The young F.E.A.R. Operative pulled one of the haphazardly located triggers on the weapon, and was rewarded with a pulse of blue energy that phased its way through the walls, and reached the position of the gentleman hiding behind the column. A cry of "OMG IT BURNS" was enough to satisfy the young man.

"NOOB STOP SPAMMING PLZ!"

"GRENADE, FUCKER!"

Keller flinched as a small flying object hit his cheek, and he instinctively waited for his body to be forcefully separated into a dozen pieces. It didn't. He looked down at the floor with one nervous eye, and spotted the distinctive appearance of a **pin** lying beneath him. An explosion at the cubicle made the connection between the misthrown object and the loss of two more combatants clear. Very clear.

That left one more enemy. And he was right behind him.

"LOL I got you now, noob!"

Keller swung around instinctively, holding his large weapon at his side, and accidentally smacked into the mercenary's gut. In turn, this caused the mercenary to reach towards his belly, making him grab onto the weapon and cause it to discharge wildly. The result was not pretty.

The lobby was silent. Keller sat back, staring in wide-eyed shock, at the destruction that had been wreaked throughout the room. Five men, five living beings, had been killed by a single person. Him.

It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It was awesome! He let out a whoop of delight, and ran back inside the monitor room. It was empty as always, although in his euphoria, a backdoor that would have normally turned him away with its crushing dullness, now seemed to glow with ravishing beauty. He wanted nothing more than to put his hands on it and feel its...

He slapped himself. That sounded wrong.

After a few minutes of slogging through more crushingly dull, uninspired corridors, Keller finally managed to find himself in yet another lobby. This time, it was a darkened one, with a coffee table overlooking a view into the optical delights of the Auburn Industrial District. A laptop was invitingly placed on it, a little suspicious, but nothing too alarming for him.

He walked over to the laptop, and accessed it.

**USERNAME: Username**

PASSWORD: Password

ACCESS GRANTED.

A look into our projects______DATA DELETED_____

PROJECT UMBRELLA:________USE____PHARMACEU______ELLA_______ MAKE ZOMBIES AND SOLDIERS BY MAKING THEM SICK_______FAILED.

PROJECT ORIGIN:_______CLASSIFIED! CLASS 10 ACCESS ONLY! Haha, just kidding…that old pedo Harlan's doomed us all by pissing off his dead chick of a daughter. F.E.A.R. HER!

**PROJECT PLATO: An attempt to make the Replica forces more intelligent. Succeeded – to an extent. Instead of being cowardly or exposing their positions by radioing each other every five seconds, all test-subjects instead have figured out the banality of their existence and have put themselves out of their misery with their standard-issue weaponry. I feel depressed typing this report.**

PROJECT THESEUS: Study on the F.E.A.R. team. Test subjects include Steve Chen and David Raynes. It iHAHAHAHA DUMBEST PROJECT EVER, ARISTIDE – Senator XOXO

"HALO THAR WE MEAT AGAIN!"

Keller sighed as a swarm of dark figures came out of the shadows.

"Why is no one happy to see me?"

**********

"Say it to me again...."

"Our platoon in the Data Center's been wiped out, sir..."

"....how?"

"uhh....by the F.E.A.R. team, sir..."

"Gah! Well....they're worthy adversaries...."

"Sir, it's Raynes' team...."

"What the hell? What happened?"

"Well....ah....sir....I..."

"What happened?"

"They were taken out by a single man. They broke into the computer lobby, one man being taken down by a turret, two more blew themselves up, one got blasted by a confiscated VES rifle, and the last accidentally killed himself."

"And what happened to this lone ranger?"

"He arrived at the lobby and cracked the code that we've spent ages working on."

"What a genius. What were the encryption codes?"

"er....Username and Password..."

"...those conniving bastards....did he get captured?"

"Ah....no sir....about twenty of the mercenaries came out of the shadows and cornered him."

"What happened then?"

"A little girl happened, sir."

"....what'd you say?"

"Sir, the camera footage showed a little girl walking into the room and....er….everyone exploded."

"Including the operative?"

"He fell out the window, sir."

"What???"

"Yes, I know, it's a terrible waste of lives and all that, but.."

"Keep an eye out for this…Operative…"

*******

As he slowly slipped into a fitful sleep, Keller could see the faces of Chen and Raynes looming over him with sickening smiles on their faces. He could see a Lawrence-shaped hole in the ceiling above him, with blood splattered everywhere.

"Dramatic entrance, eh? Come on, Keller...."

They walked off without him, leaving him to pass out.

**(There. I've actually written this a few months ago, but I just didn't have the time to upload it. Interval 2 will be up next. Please, any comments are welcome, as long as they are helpful and informative. That includes flames…but only if they're flames that suggest something useful!**

**Awkwardly written…next update will involve a politically incorrect gunslinger, a wind-up toy, and an EXTREMELY drawn-out chase scene! Stay tuned…)**


	4. Interval 03: Disturbing Disturbances

**Interval 03: Disturbance**

_"Yellow, this is Thomas Jefferson speaking."_

"Senator, skip with the theatrics. Project Theseus has just entered its...what are you doing?"

"Hee hee....ah, nothin', just lookin' at some nude pics.."

"That was not part of the agreement, Sen-"

"That was a bet, Aristide...a bar bet....you're probably the sorest loser I've seen in a long time, and I'm in politics."

"There is a new member of the F.E.A.R. team, a Lawrence Keller. Any intel on him?"

"Ah...Keller! Hot damn, girl, me and him go WAY back!"

".......you don't."

"I'm the one who's allowing you to pay your electricity bill, Genny..watch what your boney mouth decides to splutter out."

"They have managed to retrieve some data from the Data Center, and they reportedly ran into heavy resistance. What'd you say?"

"Nothing."

"Sounded like you were choking on something."

"I'm allergic to bullshit, carry on."

"Not Replicas, Senator. Not part of Armacham, or anything of that sort. Apparently....they resemble the Icarus subjects in that their suits are needlessly ninja-like, and they carry weapons that appear to be left-overs from some particularly bad sci-fi films....remember _**The Day Uranus Came!**__ and the other films?"_

"I have no fucking idea who I'm talking to, and in fact, I'm so bored and careless that I'll go on a limb and say that I've never known you, Genny. Bye, babe."

"Senator. Fuck."

A blind, unpopular lizard crawled awkwardly over a particularly offensive looking fountain. It is easy to understand why this lizard would be shunned by its fellow reptiles, for entering this part of the city was not a very fashionable or sensible thing for right-minded creatures to be in. However, the lizard, having a left-of-center mind, was busy focusing on a fly whose irritating buzzing also caused it to make itself deaf to reason and find itself flying here.

It was splattered by the rear end of a rather non-belightedly unoverweight Asian man, who was totally apathetic to its horrible demise, or to its last pained thoughts (_Oh no, not again._)

Apathy is a very severe affliction, and a common cause for death in 71% of fourth-world countries. Currently, Apathy lies in 4,294,465th place on the research priority list at what used to be Fairport University, and what is now Armacham Technology Corporation's Plaza. Incidentally, the predicament of being able to train genetically altered clone soldiers to not turn on their amoral controllers comes in at 5th place on their priority list, which gives an idea of what Armacham is like.

Armacham Plaza was an unpleasant place, having been dull before the rather dreary university was bought out by the military contractor Armacham Technology Corporation, and now being positively sleep-inducing at this point.

It was also the place that F.E.A.R. Operatives Lawrence Keller, Daniel Raynes and Steve Chen had hiked towards. There was no particular reason, other than that Raynes had wanted to see whether there were aliens inside the Plaza.

There were no rumors about the Plaza's possession of aliens, at least none that were fashionable and appropriate, although the rumors that WERE popular were no less absurd or intelligent.

Fairport University was a place of enlightenment and wisdom, where the finest teachers and most learned scholars remained to impart their knowledge to bright young students. It was ignored by 99.9999% of the rest of the city.

Eventually, a young, financially-minded, cunning and utterly unscrupulous businessman named Roland Salyers decided to revamp the University to attract the more hip crowd. After half of the budget had been spent on attaching curtains and flyers around the campus, placing skantily-clad waitresses around to "serve" the "customers", and encouraging people to take "mentally-stimulating courses", the University decided that enough was enough and decided to let the Armacham investors who were pining at their gates inside.

The plan backfired. The beautiful nineteenth-century architecture of the outer buildings remained, but there were loud noises inside the buildings and plenty of flashing lights. People began to think there were parties going on, particularly unpleasant ones full of guests you would not enjoy talking to, or perhaps they were trying to make a Z-movie.

Even a few tin-foil hat-toting people like David Raynes whispered that it was the work of aliens. They were so interested, that top-secret missions were not enough for him to take a diversion to spy for them.

"Ever heard of Nordics, Keller?"

The youth was busy tapping his foot, sitting on a rickety old bench and wishing that he was back in boot camp, with room-mates who he could relate to and a bathroom that was not blown to smithereens. However, he was left with a pounding headache, a scarred soul from having killed five people without trying too hard, and the realization that he was busy sitting in a plaza that'd offend the tastes of particularly snobbish art-critics who were paid to be snobbish art-critics, and listening to a raving hobo and an obnoxious joker talk about aliens.

"They're these really beautiful, like, SUPER-AMAZINGLY beautiful blonde aliens, yanno…and they're all like super smart and powerful and everything and."

"Guess they aren't equal opportunity

The subsequent hour-long debate was cut off, as Keller had already shut the door of the closest building on them. It was a blacked-out, bombed-out, haunted-looking area, but Keller'd prefer a psychotic killer ghost than an alien-obsessed madman. He'd had enough experiences with his brother, and his…squad-mates were not going to remind him of that.

The architecture didn't seem to have changed much from its formerly scholarly ways, if you were to ignore the fact that cold steel lined the bright neon signs that promised free drinks, girls and damnation for only 50 bucks. Also, there was a service elevator that was conveniently open. It conveniently closed as he went inside, and he shrugged.

It opened up to show a seemingly endless hallway with walls the shade of month-old dog puke. As Keller stumbled out, he felt an urge to come back upstairs and forget trudging down Lucifer's Department of Dreariness and Uninspiration. Of course, he was unprepared for the elevator to suddenly slam closed as if Keller had said something offensive, and suddenly go all the way up.

Gulping, he went on, terrified of what would happen. He was completely on his own here, and the only way through this boring hallway of ergonomic walls and locked doors.

A while later, Keller's attempt at being scared waned away and disappointingly, he reverted back to being bored. It was a relief when an alarm sounded and a glass wall dropped ahead of him. Another wall fell behind him. He rolled his eyes, wondering just how bad the security of this place was, and waited for his apprehension.

A greasy man, with a face like a squashed turnip, a gunslinger moustache, a bulging belly that poked out of his blue security guard uniform, and a look of complete smugness on his face waddled out. His nametag seemed to have been taped on awkwardly, and it read "Gaurd Sanchez." The idiot could not spell his own job right...although judging by how crumpled and ill-fitting his clothes were on his frame (or excess of), that was to be expected.

"This is private property, cabron! Hands in the air right now, pendejo!"

Keller folded his arms over his chest, cautiously eyeing the sneering face that was separated from him by a foot of Xtra-Safety Glass (Property of ATC). He shook his head slowly, a smile of his own creeping up his lips. The man seemed to lose his temper.

"Awright, you dog, you asked for it! I call in robot, he gut you like sheep, ya?"

Keller raised an eyebrow as the man awkwardly turned around, reaching his doughy arm out to hit a button on the side of the rather ugly wall – and moments later, a walking tank dropped down from the far end of the "Gaurd"'s side and bumped its head into an exit sign. It re-adjusted its path, and began sprinting towards Sanchez's position with a single-minded tenacity. The "Gaurd" blubbered like an onion chef, realizing that he was trapped – the walking machine literally filled up the rather cramped dimensions of the dreary old walls.

It was only when the machine was a foot's reach away from the "Guard" did Keller finally get the urge to run away in panic. He sprinted towards the glass wall, shielding his face with his arms and leapt forward to leap through the window. He received a sore head for his troubles, and as he heard the glass wall behind him shatter, followed by the girly shrieks of the unfortunate "Gaurd", he waited for the end.

The shadow of the robot jerkily moved towards Keller, literally dwarfing the fallen agent with its size. It stopped an inch away from his head, lifted a massive foot to finish the job – and it continued to lift its foot for several minutes.

Keller eased his way out from under the robot's foot, wincing as his nose scraped the blood-stained metal of the elephantine limb, and realized that the robot had apparently run out of power. Its hull, large enough to house a man, was pointing downwards, making it look depressed. However, what was odder was the fact that there was a handle on the back of the machine. It looked like the world's largest, most violent wind-up toy.

Averting his eyes from the pancaked remains of what had been an obese security guard, Keller flicked his fingers at the robot – and to his horror, the machine fell over. He ran away just in time for the floor to give way in a manner that wasn't painful.

He opened his eyes once again, groaning as ANOTHER painful headache throbbed around in his mind. He wondered if he had sustained some sort of brain trauma, or whether he had simply woken up in his measly little apartment room to find that it was just a dream, but alas, it was not to be.

Keller found himself in the middle of a maze of glass catwalks, surrounded by a brilliantly dull blue light that made him feel woozy and sick. He looked up, wondering how far he had fallen – and winced as a rock hit him in the face.

A minute later, he got up again, rubbing his bruised forehead, and bemusedly wondered if he had wandered in the middle of a science-fiction set. It literally looked endless, as if the catwalks went on forever. He could see miles upon miles of dizzying paths leading to nowhere, some of them defying the laws of gravity, others fashion style, and most simply championing plain-old style over common sense.

He walked forward, not realizing that he had just evaded a jump-kick aimed at him by a stealthy Night Crawler which had been stalking him for hours. The Night Crawler screamed as he fell down the bottomless pit. However, do not be frightened: the Night Crawler met a fellow pit-faller, fell in love, raised a family and died happily in his sleep – still falling.

It is also interesting to note that Armacham Plaza was merely one part of ATC's most ridiculous, pointless experiment. The dreary interior design was a psychological experiment, testing how long it'd take for one's mind to degenerate according to how interesting their surroundings were.

The underground section of Armacham Plaza was more interesting. Mostly because Carson Freeman, the Chairman of The Company's Board of Directors, decided to waste the money earned from blackmailing third-world countries and its complaints department (totaling Infinity+1 $) with absurd projects such as the one Armacham Plaza was part of.

There was no real reason for why Armacham Plaza had a massive chasm carved out of solid rock, nor why it had giant catwalks leading to nowhere. Carson simply felt obliged to show his investors that he WAS using his money in some way.

On the other hand, there WAS a reason why there was a platform large enough to hold a dozen 747s in the center of the chasm, and that was because the Company decided that The Source needed an elaborate chamber to hide itself. Unfortunately, this elaborate defense mechanism accounted for the Company's abnormally low rank on the "Safety Compliance List".

As Keller made his way towards said platform, he realized that the gangly form of the man who had displayed a terrible ventriloquist performance was hunched over a heavy cylinder the size of a fire-extinguisher, grunting and straining as he tried to lift the container. It was filled with sticky white liquid.

Keller contemplated his options. He COULD let the man escape…which'd result in several hours of endless gunfights, absurd one-liners, lots of injuries, and generally a shitload of repetition.

"Screw it", he said, and he shot the man in the leg.

Five minutes later, Keller came outside into the plaza again, dragging a whimpering and beaten Morrison. Chen and Raynes looked up, their mouths full of bologna sandwiches, and Chen spoke first, spitting his half-chewed meal into Morrison's face. The blubbering pencil-neck cringed, his crotch suddenly darkening, and he issued a threat.

"Th-th-th-th-the Sen-"

Keller punched him in the face. Again. He never tired of doing that. Raynes and Chen nodded their silent approval.

Keller's moment of glory was cut short by a tremor that knocked him off his feet. He yelped as he bumped his face into a suddenly overturned picnic table, while the bodies of Chen and Raynes seemed to stick to each other. They groaned in anger.

"Stop touching me down there, Raynes!"

"You first, Chin-chin!"

"Hey, I'm not scared, I'm just bored!"

"Like I've never heard that before…"

Keller moaned weakly, feeling as if he had angered a bull. Morrison had somehow managed to take hold of the young man's gun, firing a bullet at point-blank range at the man's bullet-proof vest, and then ran off giggling like a little girl into a conveniently placed subway entrance. He saw Raynes chasing Chen with the remains of his bologna sandwich, and realized that he was going to be left behind.

He turned back to face the street, and saw that an enormous mushroom cloud now engulfed the sky. Also, he turned just in time to see a car fly into his face.

He was thrust back into the subway, and the last thing he saw was that the ceiling collapsing.

**(A very underwhelming depiction of the Origin Explosion, I know. I do hope you like my subversion of Morrison's chase scene, though! Any criticism or comments would be appreciated!)**


	5. Intermission

She was not happy. She was also hungry too. One may find it strange that undeath still leaves one vulnerable to human urges, such as hunger, thirst....and carnal desire.

Oh yes, Alma knew who she was. She was a little girl in a young woman's soul in a middle-aged undead hag's body with 2-year-old rabid Chihuahua's sex drive, and she really, really, REALLY wanted a man.

And she found a man she was interested in. He was mute, like her son. He was handsome, VERY handsome, like her son. And he was completely emotionless, again like her son. She was in love.

Alma quickly prepared to manifest over to her unrequited love, but she still fussed over her appearance. She was satisfied with her long, stringy, greasy hair. She preferred having the breeze blow over her rotten, decayed and bare skin. She could cover her skeletal face with her hair. She only wondered one thing: _Does the blood make me look fat?_

*****

Katherine Stokes made sure to bounce especially high whenever Manny "Madman" Morales drove over a pothole. She had had a hell of a time finding a tailor willing to make a fashionable belly shirt for her uniform, but the gawky stares of her goony squad-mates proved well worth the trouble.

Besides, she was hoping that the tall, dark and handsome man sitting across from her would notice. He didn't. She walked over to him again and bent over, unzipping her vest to expose a chest that'd make any normal man stare at wondrously. He continued to stare blankly at the wall with a be-goggled million-yard stare. She fidgeted with his goggles, making sure that he could smell her. He didn't blink, breathe, or appear to show any life-signs.

She loved that.

She slapped Redd S. Jankowski, who had snuck up behind her and dropped an ice-cube down her back. The giggling little idiot didn't care about the extensive beating he suffered; it was the first time in a while that he'd ever touched a woman.

The leader of the team, Cedric "Topless" Griffin, couldn't care less. He hadn't heard much of the suit they were sent to pick up, but from what he understood, she was as threatening as a kitten wearing razor-blades. Besides, with Matty's driving, a "five-minute drive" would actually mean a scenic tour of the dreary Auburn District, followed by an hour of traffic and the awkward realization that they were going in circles. Oh well, no use fighting it, he supposed.

James Fox fingered the picture of his pale, skinny, scantily-clad wife, his dark-haired, skeletal and grown daughter who was clad in a red dress, and his younger, blonder, less creepy daughter with a strong sense of loving. At least, that's what he tried to make the other guys think. He was actually single.

Harold "Harry" Keegan, the man sitting next to Stokes' unfortunate (and motionless) target, was busy being trapped in a hellish world plagued with horrific visions of a lone tree, and of a little girl swinging in an irresistibly sexy manner. He was confused. It would be the last time he'd try mixing alcohol with Cheezee Pooz.

Unbeknownst to all of them, Alma Wade was riding underneath the rickety APC, waiting for it to stop so that she could kill the irresponsible driver. He scared her.

****

"Why hello there, **Senator**. I just called to say 'I love...oh, wrong note...the Origin situation's been resolved, asshole."

"So much for discretion. This scandal's worse than that night at Neely's..."

"There's some good news, however. The First Prototype....was a complete success."

"......what prototype?"

"The Origin subject."

"You mean the little girl?"

"The point man of the F.E.A.R. team's gone off our radar, but according to our reports, he's managed to wipe out the Perseus Replicas and destroy the Origin Facility."

"And that's what I'm supposed to say when the fuzz ask me about how the city got halved?'

"Also, what the fuck are you doing with Morrison, Senator."

"Who the hell is-"

"Gavin Morrison is your main crony, Senator. How fitting, seeing how much he loves to suck up."

"Coming from the woman who had to blow her way up the corporate ladder."

"Senator, I thought Project Theseus was just another of your immature pranks. I can't believe the extents of your idiocy...what on **Earth** possessed you to hire the Night Crawlers?"

"Oh, I read their ad on the Classifieds section. 555-DIAL-A-GOON."

"They have no loyalty to anyone, Senator. Even if you were Grand High Master of the Universe, they'd slit your throat and leave you hanging out to dry."

"Awesome, I always thought that President was the end of the road. Thanks for clearing that up, Genny."

"Hang on...what's this? I just got a message on my beeper...it says...uh... "WTF R U DOING ARSTD? U HAV MADE ATC LUK STPD. WERE GNA BLW U UP, HA HA. 3 C.S."

"Oh, did I hear something just now? Oh, sounds like someone just got served!"

"You little fucker, I'll.....fuck."

"Look, Genny, I only forwarded the details about Project Theseus to your board of directors. It seems the Chairman didn't really like it. Look, I'm sorry. How about I give you some Deltas to cheer you up?"

"The Harbinger subjects?"

"Even better....Becket."

"Are you serious??! Bring him to me immediately!"

"Awrighty then..."

**Ten minutes before The Incident  
Valkyrie Tower, Downtown Fairport**

Stokes had to grip onto a blood-slicked railing to keep herself from swooning. She was absolutely, irreversibly, completely in love with her fellow soldier, the emotionless killing machine who had wordlessly ended the lives of twenty human beings with surgical precision and as much remorse as the tool of murder he was using. He hadn't even glanced at her or taken a breath, and his perfectly practiced accuracy gave off the impression that he had gone through such things a thousand times over.

She stared at his motionless, blood-covered form in amazement, her mouth open slightly, and then her face felt hot and she covered up her arousal by smashing open a door panel that was conveniently next to her. He had received a mere flesh-wound in the center of his forehead during the battle, but he did not seem to register the pain or even care.

She quickly ran over the miniature war in her mind, every murder being detailed in beautifully stylish detail.

"Hell of a view, huh?" she whispered as she brushed her shoulder against his, putting her unarmed hand on her vest and unzipping it dangerously further. The man gave no response, his expression still eerily determined on giving the impression that he was a particularly annoyed bull, and continued to run around the elevator in an endless, tireless merry-go-round.

He paid no attention to the beautiful views provided by his companion or the rather extensive view of downtown Fairport provided by the glass elevator they were in. However, he did seem to make it a point to step on the corpse currently inside the elevator with him. Stokes frowned, feeling guilty for letting her guard down and allowing the man to give her fellow squad-mate a dirty look before the entire squad had unloaded enough bullets into his perforated body to fill a dump truck. At least he was dead now.

The elevator pinged, signalling that they had finally arrived at their destination, and she whispered to herself.

"Go, Becket, go!"

And he did "Go", bursting out of the elevator with inhuman speed and firing a single bullet straight into the skull of the heavily armed mercenary standing beside the elevator, making him flop flatly to the ground. By the time she jumped out waving her gun around, he had already gone into the plaza and slaughtered the paramilitary troops currently inside. The only sign of hostility, aside from the plentiful amount of blood that splattered the area and of its perpetrator, was a small ham radio.

"I don't care if it's Miguel Cervantes, kill the bastards!"

The man leapt high into the air and delivered a strong kick to the radio.

As the man went off, in search of more mercenaries to kill with his guns, bare hands and well-shoed feet, Stokes wiped her forehead and radioed in

"I'm not meeting much resistance."

There was no response from the other team. Unbeknownst to her, Redd Jankowski had fallen unconscious after being accosted by a team of little girl, a tempting needle glowing with yellow stuff, and the Grim Reaper. Meanwhile, Morales was watching **Entourage** on the APC's Communication, Radio And Personnel system, raising the volume to drown out the frantic pleas of Fox, Keegan and Griffin as they were being set upon by enough commandos to populate a third-world country.

She shrugged, sat down on a deck-chair after pushing a corpse off it, and took a sip from the cocktail drink that was still left on the table beside it. If only she had a good book to read, it'd be like a vacation...

**Five minutes before The Incident  
Rammelmeir Compound, Auburn District, Fairport**

The F.E.A.R. Point Man sighed in annoyance as the sensation of having his head split open once again invaded his senses. He had already figured out his identity and that of his tormentor's three decades ago, and if there was one thing he hated more than anything, it was being reminded that he was once a baby. That he was once helpless, innocent, pathetic.

The fiery hospital lobby loomed out ahead of him, having previously appeared to have been an underground maintenance room. He was, frankly, bored of the repetition. He shrugged as the gravelly voice of the long-deceased Charles Habeggar, the man whose death The Point Man's crazed brother had insisted was well-deserved, droned out mindlessly about him being born in that place.

_I was not born in a fiery little lobby. I was not born in an underground maintenance room that simply looks like the lobby that widdle mummy is whinging about. I was born in a crappy abandoned hospital...okay, I guess you're right, that lobby was part of the hospital._

He kicked open the door, heard a sob, and turned to see the horribly twisted, decomposed face of his mother grinning out desperately at him, her stringy hair conveniently covering her rotten private parts and her arms reaching out for him.

_My baby....please..._

He shot her, completely oblivious to the cries of a desperate mother. He reloaded his clip, wondered momentarily why he was able to make an apparition bleed, and then moved up to the stairwell at the end of the lobby. As he opened up, instead of being set upon by a grotesque meat-puppet or given a reprieve from the painful repetition of entering another's mind, he was once again set upon by his mother....

...who now seemed to be wearing a little girl's dress on her skeletal frame. He was stunned by the sheer unpleasantness of what was exposed, and it was only when her skin brushed against his clothes that he fired point-blank at her skull and warded her off.

He continued on, thankful that so far, the obnoxious, giggling little kid wasn't there. It was replaced by a pitiful undead woman, but at least the latter acted her age.

He moved down the cramped hallway, yawning as he reached the end of the door, and saw a scientist frantically pounding on the door. He rolled his eyes as his mother appeared to give the man some unfriendly weight loss treatment, and then spun around as his mother gave him a convenient warning.

He fired at her rapidly approaching form, no anger or fear affecting his aim. His weapon clicked empty, she reached out to embrace him....and disappeared.

He holstered his weapon and took out his fists, wondering WHEN the reactor he had blown up an hour ago would reach the surface. When he heard his mother cry out for him, calling him a baby, he winced at the perceived insult.

My baby. Give him back to me.

GIVE ME BACK MY BABY

He was being picked up by the old man, the bespectacled and foul-mouthed old man who was now a puddle of paint currently decorating a metallic coffin. The man uttered a cryptic yet true prediction, and then blankly ordered for 'her', his MOTHER, to be taken away from him...

He saw her reaching out for him, and was amazed at how different she looked, how young, how alive she was at that moment.

NO

He was dropped on his head, hearing the man swear under his breath, and the last part of his first memory was of a file. Its significance was now fully clear.

**Project Origin  
Subject - Alma**

He whistled as the hallucination finally ended, and then ran to the end of the corridor, opening it and finding a perverse glee in realising that it was indeed a maintenace hallway with a beautiful elevator at the end, and not another absurd hospital. He heard his mother.

His childish mother.

He delivered a one-fingered salute to the darkness behind him with his middle-finger, and ran off into the elevator, hoping against hope that his mission would finally end and that he'd stop being stalked by dead women...

**One Minute After Incident**

The Night Crawler Commander sat down on a step, the stress of having to walk up all twenty flights of stairs after the pencil-necked government goon overwhelming to him. His two Night Crawler bodyguards, Cosbot and Abtello, shrugged as their fat commander ordered them to continue on, and then planted their feet on him.

The sheer weight caused the entire stairwell to lose its structural integrity and collapse, instantly killing the two traitorous mercenaries and allowing the Night Crawler Commander to slowly starve to death over a few months, having been cushioned by his state-of-the-art combat uniform and the result of his Cheezee Pooz loyalty.

The Cheezee Pooz company would close up its shop a year later, due to corporate espionage, the loss of a couple of its most prolific customers, obvious health issues, and an undead demi-goddess wreaking havoc on the planet.

The point of this anecdote? A new Commander was brought into place. He was a rather...extravagant man, though. A former action hero star. Clad in a red tank-top, sunglasses and jeans, this muscle-bound blonde would only answer to the name "Duke". He delivered quirky quips to numerous mercenary fans who accused him of being a 'tease'. And then blew them away. Repeatedly.

The Night Crawler Community is currently undergoing a major civil war involving several third-world countries. We do not apologize for any inconvenience. We revel in it.

.......we'll just leave them to sort out their leadership, and come back to them later, shall we?

The Point Man frowned. For some odd reason, he had expected the nuclear reactor to not create a nuclear reaction. In any case, he, unlike presumably thousands upon thousands of innocent human beings, had survived. More than that, he was not harmed in any way. Unless this was another trick of his mother's.

She was nasty like that.

The rescue chopper flew into view. He marvelled at how contrived it was, for a lone helicopter to bravely wade into a radiated wasteland in the hypothetical hopes of locating a man who was present at Ground Zero. If he hadn't made it a point to avoid talking to his fellow team-mates as part of a social experiment that only he understood, he would have screamed "I hope you're sterilized, assholes!"

He sighed, shut his eyes, and awoke to find himself five miles in the air. He blinked a couple of times, and realised that he was actually in the helicopter, with his surviving compatriots huddled beside him. Jin looked nervously at him, while Holiday seemed to be a little annoyed. Presumably because the latter's team had completely failed at their mission, while a creepy mute, an old-fashioned slob and a hot-and-cold woman with an unbelievable talent for saying the most profound things received all the credit.

It may have been that he and Jin were the only ethnic members in the assignment, and an angry dead chick was on the loose.

"I dunno how you can live through that...." mumbled Holiday. "We still don't know the extent of the damage."

The Point Man leaned over, marvelling that there was no door present on the Blackhawk. At least it allowed him a good look at the mushroom cloud, and it looked rather flat and dull from his perspective. He had expected it to be...bigger.

The medic was talking. "We haven't been able to get through to anyone since the explosion...what about Alma?"

"What about the bitch?" glowered The Point Man, yanking off his balaclava to reveal another skin-tight mask. Jin looked at him with an air of disappointment, and said

"What happened to her-"

The helicopter rumbled, and for a moment, The Point Man thought that the helicopter was getting shot down. Again. Instead, however, he heard a girlish laugh and saw a pasty face pull its way up onto the helicopter.

Alma Wade found herself suddenly kicked out of the flying machine by her own son, and was too stunned to prevent herself from dissolving in time to avoid splattering all over the pavement. It hurt. She opened her eyes, rage and fury completely filling up every fibre of her body, and was subsequently hit by the falling helicopter.

Raynes sighed as the world fell into fiery chaos and ashen death around him, and marvelled at all the pretty fireworks. It was rather hot, though, and he took off his jacket as he strolled down the subway. He wondered where his friends were going. The Asian and the Kid would need to see the natural splendour of a nuclear explosion, as soon as the fallout cleared.

Whistling to himself, Raynes completely failed to notice a horde of nightmarish shades heading towards his direction. Creatures of unimaginably depraved design and malicious intelligence vowed to destroy him, and were instead perplexed by his complete impassiveness to them. He plowed through the dust-bunnies, the demon puddles, the epileptic ghosts. He had never explored the subway section of the Orange Line before, and he wasn't going to let a national tragedy get in his way.

Genevieve Aristide grinned as her goons took away the unconscious Harbinger Subject, removed the unfortunate blood stains left from the merciless slaughter of the mercenaries sent to destroy her, and changed the sheets. She took another swig from her bottle of extremely rare 200 year-old Albanian wine, her fifth one, reached for her beeper, and dialled the number to her friend.

"Urgh."

"Hello, sweetie! Everything's gone according to plan. I got to spend a little time giving Becket a full-body physical exam, and he's serviced me extremely well! Tell my ex that, will you please, dearie?"

"Ungh."

"Oh, right. You have a vendetta against that kid. Look, you're an immortal creature, the lord of the realm of Waste or whatever you call it. Look, he's part of Theseus now, we can induct-"

"Urghgurr!"

"Look, I know it started off as a joke, but look...Chen's been close to fulfilling his purpose. Raynes, on the other hand...he may come off as an idiot, but he's shown far more potential than any other test subject I've ever seen. Hell, he might even be a good match for that Alma girl!"

"Ughghhh..."

"Ah, yes. I know. Morrison paged me. Said that the Senator got pissed off and sent his personal team of mercenaries to kill everyone. And then, as backup, he sent another team to make the job more effective, and yet another to kill the other teams once they were done. And yes, I know about the gazillion mercenary factions that the Night Crawlers called in. And the fact that my Company's still trying to kill me, the ungrateful bastards."

She sighed, her eyes trailing off to the enormous miniature library that she called a bookshelf. Maternity books, childcare tips, stories on the joy of motherhood...

"Where are you?"

"Ugrh."

"Ah. You might bump into Keller then. Go easy on the kid. Let him feel like he's a badass...it'll make your satisfaction all the much better."

"Urgh?"

"Yes, I'm sure of it. Anything else?"

"Unghurgh?"

"No. Absolutely not. If you want to stay in my bathroom, you're going to have to ruin the Theseus team's shit first."

"Hurrghh..."

"Honestly, monsters these days. Give one a suit and they suddenly think they're Rockefeller or something...."

**(Keller will return after this Intermission!)**


End file.
